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Windows 7 on the Mac Under Parallels

I love Parallels.  Parallels is virtualization software:  it allows you to create a pretend (virtual) machine on your Mac, on which you can install Windows or Ubuntu or Slackware or whatever.  It’s a powerful concept:  you can create a dedicated Linux machine for Web browsing, or a Windows computer that never connects to anything except your bank.

Generally Parallels is easy to use and set up.  The hardest thing about it is spelling the word “Parallels.” I find this to be difficult: there are three separate places where you have to decide on double- or single-consonants.

So I’m eager to try the new Windows 7 public beta on Parallels.  After some adventures (mostly stupid), I got Windows 7 to install OK under Parallels, and I find it to be quite zippy (totally unlike Vista).

But I can’t get networking to go.  I can’t get Windows 7 to recognize my imaginary network card.  It recognizes all the other imaginary hardware… so what’s the deal?

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January 15th, 2009 | Tags: , , , | Category: Apple, windows | Comments (26)

Windows 7 on the Mac Under VirtualBox

I’m trying out Windows 7 on my old Intel-based iMac, and it’s going pretty well. One of the ways I’m doing this is with VirtualBox (a free, open-source virtualization tool from Sun).

I had some adventures, mostly stupid, getting it installed.  But now it’s working, and mostly correctly…  with some issues.

In general, Windows 7 is sprightly and responsive running in a child window on my 2.16 GHz dual-core Intel Mac.  It hogs up most of my 2 Gb of RAM, and works the CPUs hard, but that’s good, I think.  It takes just eight seconds, total, to start VirtualBox and restore the Windows session.  Sweet!

Video playback is smooth, even when Windows is doing other things in the background like initializing a “Homegroup.”

But so far I haven’t been able to get a peep out of the sound card.   Not so much as a bzzt.  Windows says that “no audio devices are installed.”

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January 13th, 2009 | Tags: , , , | Category: Apple, windows | Comments (10)

Windows 7 on the Mac

I’m trying to install a beta of Windows 7 in a VirtualBox on my iMac.

VirtualBox is a free, open-source application that lets you run one operating system inside another.  I use it at work, to run a relatively bulletproof Ubuntu install on my Windows laptop, and I use it at home, to run Windows XP on my Mac.  I love it, and it generally works very well.

The idea is that you create a virtual machine, and a virtual hard drive, and then you download an .ISO file, and tell that virtual machine that it’s a CD-ROM.

Generally it works great.

So I downoaded the .ISO from Microsoft, and started the install.

The installer loads and starts up fine.  But it quickly stops with a (very attractive!) dialog box that says:

Windows could not collect information for [OSImage] since the specified image file [install.wim] does not exist.

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January 10th, 2009 | Tags: , , | Category: Apple, windows | Comments (21)